Mutual Funds Less Popular Among Youngest, Oldest Investors

Surprise – it’s not just Baby Boomers who invest in mutual funds, the latest industry research finds.

Close to 50% of Generation Xers own these financial products, which puts them very close to the average fund ownership level of boomers.

Meanwhile, both older generations and younger ones have room to catch up, numbers released by the annual Investment Company Institute on Friday show. The percent of households headed by millennials, as well as members of the Silent and G.I. generations, have an average fund ownership level of slightly above 30%.

“Our 2014 household survey showed that mutual funds are an investment staple in about half the households headed by either a baby boomer or member of Generation X,” said Sarah Holden, ICI senior director of retirement and investor research, in a statement.

“This high incidence of ownership makes sense in light of the findings that among mutual fund–owning households, most are headed by individuals in their peak earning years, most own mutual funds in a tax-deferred account, and nearly all are focused on retirement saving,” Holden explained.

(Baby boomers are defined as those born between 1946 and 1964, while Gen Xers are classified as individuals between 1965 and 1980; millennials are those born from 1981 to 1996, and members of the Silent and G.I. generations were born between 1904 and 1945.)

Overall, some 53.2 million U.S. households, or 43%, own mutual funds, the most recent survey shows. This figure includes more than 90 million individual investors.

Of this total, baby boomers represent about 42% fund–owning households and own about 51% of all fund assets overall.